Design transforms the climate crisis into an opportunity: we visited the Solar Biennial

Spring-Summer, 2025. Meteorological agencies around the world confirm that the climate situation is steadily changing; solar radiation will cause further temperature rises, leading to a profound and irreversible shift in our daily habits. What’s design got to do with climate change? Everything, if we seriously consider adaptation as an essential design strategy – not just to survive, but to benefit from such a monumental shift.

At Mudac, the Lausanne Museum of Design, the Solar Biennale is in full swing – a format created by Marjan Van Aubel and Pauline Van Dongen, who call themselves “solar designers.” Their mission is to explore what we can do with the sun – its radiation, its temperatures, and especially its energy – essentially, to unlock the full potential of our star, which graces us with its fleeting presence every day.

In 2022, they founded the Solar Movement, followed by the first edition in Eindhoven, with the goal of shifting the focus to solar energy.

For this second edition, Soleil-s (the first in a traveling series), mudac and its curators, Scott Longfellow and Rafaël Santianez, continue their research and broaden the theme by inviting designers, artists, scientists, and activists to explore new approaches to the ecological transition. This exploration goes beyond energy issues, delving into the symbolic and political dimensions of design. The opening statement to visitors is a declaration of intent, presented in three points: 1. Let us feed on life (sun) and not death (fossils); 2. Let us find our place under the sun; 3. Let us learn to dance consciously, because, whatever happens, we revolve around the sun.

Among the many works, objects, themes, and installations (notably the installation by TAKK Studio – Mireia Luzárraga and Alejandro Muiño – which not only showcases documents but creates real thematic pavilions), some “situations” deserve more than just mention to convey the richness and complexity of this contemporary design exhibition.

After an initial section focused on “solar design,” the spaces open up and evolve according to the narrative’s needs, including historical sections and data analysis. A particularly interesting, almost independent section, brings the past into the present, recounting the utopia of Monte Verità, diving into heliotherapeutic colonies and sanatoriums of the late 19th century, and exploring the evolution of beach tourism in relation to the body’s semi-nakedness under the sun. This is illustrated through works and a curated display of Vogue covers, where fashion has explored the relationship between bodies and the outdoors.

At the center of the space, like a large suspended grid hemisphere, Have A Nice Day (Common Accounts, 2024-25) is an artificial sun where visitors are invited to lie down and experience the benefits that various technological devices derive from the sun: warmth, light frequencies, and electromagnetic waves that help regenerate cells, fight skin aging, or even stimulate fertility.

In a corner opening to the room’s only large triangular “window,” we find the Solar Lab (Juliette Bibasse & Joanie Lemercier, 2025), featuring experiments that are as artistic as they are empirical and scientific. Here, technological objects – screens, lenses, mirrors, and various hardware – are deconstructed and reassembled according to new principles, all emphasizing the strong link between energy and ecology. Notably, for this occasion, “heliostats” were created: mirrored surfaces placed on the building’s roof, intentionally opened at certain points to capture direct sunlight and dynamically distribute it to various precise points inside. These visual surprises only occur during the day when the sky is clear.

One particularly engaging, though abstract and speculative, “political” space is Right to Day (Vraiment Vraiment – Marilyne Andersen, 2025), which simulates a virtuous public administration regulating the provision of natural light, with official declarations of personal chronotypes for the physiological and psychological well-being of citizens – a crucial public health issue still absent from governmental priorities.

In a gallery dedicated to more intimate works, the video A Shroud Woven of Solar Threads (Ala Roushan & Charles Stankievech, 2024-25) virtually reconstructs, with striking fidelity, the interior of a cave in Mesopotamia where, over 4,000 years ago, during a long drought that caused an agricultural crisis, the ancient Persian people gathered to invoke Mithra, the sun deity, seeking a dialogue, with adaptation and respect, between celestial influences and earthly needs.

Finally, staying true to the third commandment posted at the entrance, in a deliberately secluded corner, an irresistible rhythm forms a danceable beat: it’s the interactive installation Baddance With The Badweeds (Rocio Berenguer, 2025), where visitors are invited to transform into “weeds” – symbols of resistance, embodying an uncontrollable force of life that thrives against all odds, beyond control. According to the artist, ecology can also be sexy – far beyond serious data and scientific research – and to be truly so, one must dance, jump, and spread one’s energy into the air like seeds of a new species.

Riding the wave of growing enthusiasm that encourages overcoming fears of the future, in an outdoor underground garden, visible from above, are large photographs from Martin Parr’s visual research. A selection of images, all dedicated to the body under the sun, with criticism, seduction, and irony. As an attentive photographer and chronicler of our times, he uses sunlight to capture his images, reversing the perspective to show us an “unusual relative” that makes us smile while also prompting deeper reflection.

The Solar Biennale isn’t just an exhibition in a museum – it’s a platform for events, a schedule of cultural and social activities igniting both the exhibition space and satellite venues throughout the city. Among them, the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), which will host two additional in-depth events: one focused on architecture, Sun Shines on Architecture at the Archizoom space, and another dedicated to contemporary art, Enter the Hyper Scientific Program at the EPFL Pavilion A.

Opening image: Astrostrom, Greater Earth Energy Synergies, 2022-2024 © Arthur Woods